France bids adieu to its colonial past

In 2017 Emmanuel Macron – the first French president born after decolonisation – told a group of young people in Burkina Faso that he wouldn’t tell Africa what to do.

So what? He didn’t. Since 2022 France’s military presence in Africa has shrunk drastically from a position of influence to one of relative weakness. Results include

• a failure to contain Islamist extremism in the Sahel;
• an opening for opportunists, including Russia;
• a deepening humanitarian emergency across the region; and
• a lesson for leaders: withdrawing military support (or aid) can create a vacuum.

Three years ago French troops were stationed in at least nine African states. By the end of this year only one French base will remain: in Djibouti.

• In 2022 the French military withdrew from Mali and the Central African Republic.
• By the end of 2023 it had left Burkina Faso and Niger.
• In January 2024 it left Chad, and today France will hand over its last base in Côte d’Ivoire.

Foothold. After decolonisation France maintained a military presence across the continent, using it as a strategic asset for operations and to provide stability to newly independent states.

Stronghold. In 2014, with the cooperation of Sahel governments, France launched Operation Barkhane, aimed at combatting Islamist extremist groups gaining ground in the region. Paris invested up to €1 billion annually in Barkhane. At its height up to 5,500 troops were stationed across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad. Successes included recapturing the Malian cities of Timbuktu and Gao.

But the operation ended in 2022, undone by anti-French sentiment rooted in France’s colonial past and fueled by Russian disinformation campaigns. The Sahel is now more unstable than ever.

Soldiers of fortune. A series of coups from 2020 to 2023 in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso gave rise to juntas eager to rid their countries of the French presence and seek other partners.

• Mali has become Moscow’s key stronghold in the Sahel. Its Africa Corps, which includes African sections of the Wagner Group, is estimated to have 1,000 to 2,000 personnel in the country.
• In 2024, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that SADAT, a private Turkish defense consultancy, employed more than 1,000 Syrian mercenaries in Niger to safeguard Turkish interests.
• Reports suggest Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has shown interest in sending troops to Chad to curb migration flows toward Europe.

Migration engine. The effects of conflict are compounded by those of climate change, which will drive more migration north. That will play into the hands of anti-immigration political parties in Europe and extremists in the Sahel and West Africa, where

• 38 million people face severe food insecurity;
• more than 5.7 million are internally displaced; and
• 2 million were refugees in 2024.

Two prominent Islamist groups in the region are the Sahelian branch of al-Qaeda and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger claim they are winning the fight against these insurgents, but “they are at best stuck, and at worst gradually losing the fight,” says Will Brown of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Burkina Faso in particular is nearing collapse: extremist groups now control as much as 80 per cent of its territory.

What’s more…In 2024 there were 11,200 deaths linked to militant Islamist groups in the Sahel – three times more than in 2021.